Forget Feldman: It's Gulf State Judges We Should Worry Are Biased by Big Oil

It sure set off alarm bells, the news that federal judge Martin Feldman — who overturned the Obama administration's six-month moratorium on offshore drilling Tuesday — holds oil industry stock. My gut instinct, though, is that it'll turn out to be a non-story. Disinterested experts note that Feldman's ruling focused on the unusually broad language of the moratorium: he is not so much supporting Big Oil's arguments as criticizing the feds for overstepping their bounds.

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But there is a genuine, and much larger, court scandal on the horizon. As the lawsuits against BP and other involved companies mount, many of them are going to be brought in state courts. And judges in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama — the three states so far most impacted by the spill — are elected. Which means they have to campaign. Which means they have to take campaign donations. And you'll never guess who's donating.

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In the interest of speed, I've taken a look at just the Louisiana Supreme Court. Two of its seven justices — Bernette Johnson and Jeannette Knoll — list no donations since 2000. Two more, Jeffrey Victory and Marcus Clark, show extremely limited campaign donations since 2000, largely from private citizens. (Clark also received $500 from Dow Chemical.)

Again: This is just the Supreme Court of one state. There are also hundreds of lower court judges in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. A complete search will reveal thousands of similar donations to them.

In the coming years, it is a certainty that dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of cases against BP and others involved in the spill will be filed in the state courts of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. It is worth asking — now, and insistently — whether these courts will be able to provide anything approaching justice.